PRE-1865.
SPRING 2026 TOPIC: "Bards, Saints, and Sorcery: Early Celtic Myths and Legends."

This course surveys the prose and poetic texts produced in the Celtic-speaking areas of Britain during the Middle Ages. We will move geographically from Ireland to Wales (with an occasional stop-over in Brittany) and chronologically from the sixth century to the sixteenth, as we study the vibrant literary tradition of prose sagas, native legends, and bardic poetry, while considering the political and cultural contexts that shaped them. Beginning with the questions of “who were the Celts?” and “what does the term ‘Celtic’ really mean?,” we then move on to key texts from early Irish and Welsh tradition, including prose works like the Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailgne (“The Cattle Raid of Cooley”) and the early Welsh Arthurian Tale Culhwch and Olwen, as well as poetic texts like The Gododdin, a series of elegies written in honor of warriors after a great battle, and early Irish lyrics like Pangur Bán, a poem composed by a monk about his cat. While this survey will introduce students to medieval literary genres and forms, we will also draw upon modern critical methods and secondary texts to consider how the Celtic-language-speaking regions were marginalized socially, culturally, and economically in the Middle Ages, providing the necessary context to thoughtfully and critically engage with this rich literature of the past.

Beowulf, the oldest narrative poem in the English language, begins: Hwæt! We Gar-Dena in

geardagum þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon, hu þa æþelingas ellen fremedon. There’s not much here that looks anything close to the language we speak today. How can this be called English!? But, upon closer inspection, there are certain recognizable words: we remains unchanged in Modern English as a plural pronoun; hwæt, though it uses a strange letter in the middle, becomes “what,” as spelling conventions switched around the “h” and “w”; the “g” in gear was pronounced with a “y”-sound, and when spelling caught up with pronunciation, became “year.” Though these lines look like a completely different language, there are hints of the English we speak today even within this excerpt. How did the English of Beowulf become the language that we use daily? How did its sounds, spellings, syntax, and vocabulary change so drastically over time? These are the key questions of this course, which introduces students to basic linguistic concepts while we explore the constantly changing English language from its earliest forms, stretching back around fourteen hundred years ago, to its variations and dialects spoken in the present. As we journey through this long history together, we’ll consider topics such as: why does Old English look like a foreign language? What are English’s closest linguistic relatives? How did contact with other languages and cultures shape English throughout its history? Is English more difficult than other languages? Why do people always complain about English spelling? Where does the idea of “proper” English come from?

As with any language, English is constantly changing, and attention to the circumstances that brought about its changes can alert us to the ways that English may shift in the future. Our course will trace the historical route of English as it developed from a tongue spoken in only a small corner of the North Atlantic to the most widely spoken language in the world by means of readings from This Language, A River (Smith and Kim) and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (Crystal), in addition to a few supplementary readings posted as pdfs on the course website. Several assessments punctuate the course throughout the semester including semi-regular tests and problem sets, a midterm and final, as well as two projects (the expectations for which will be clearly communicated beforehand!). By the end of the course, you will understand where English came from, where it is presently, and where it might go, in addition to having a broader understanding of language change and the relationship between language and culture.